I, Courtney Klein, and my Sphynx cat Yoko Ono are the subjects of this photograph. My significant other, Nino Boles-King sewed the cloth masks for us and took this photograph at the beginning of the COVID-19 shut down on April 3, 2020. Courtney is a librarian for Sebastopol Regional Library and Nino is a middle school teacher for Denman Middle School of the San Francisco Unified School District. Because of the Pandemic, we are staying at my studio apartment in Sebastopol since public libraries and public schools are closed. You’ll notice this is not necessarily a sad picture- at this time COVID-19 and Stay in Place orders were fairly new, and we were trying to make the best out of the situation we were whiplashed by. Nino sewed many cloth masks for friends, neighbors, and family members and I picked up backyard birding as a new hobby. We did like that the world was slowing down and we could spend more time together, focusing on the outdoors, reading and cooking, but this photograph only tells a part of our Coronavirus experience. Every day was not happy: we also experienced fatigue, anxiety, existential crises, job insecurity, atrophying muscles. There was laughter and there were tears; there were feelings of gratefulness and feelings of depression and even rage; we feared for the older people in our family (Nino’s Swedish step-grandmother, who he lives with in San Francisco, is 94 and before she was born she lost an older sister to the Spanish Influenza of 1918). One of our close friends in San Francisco did indeed test positive for COVID-19 and had the extreme side effects of hallucinating. It was hard when my dear friend got COVID-19 because I wanted to help her, but I could not visit her in person for fear of catching the virus. I was unable to see her for months. Buzz words that we keep hearing during this time include: “new normal,” “unprecedented,” “self-care,” “Sonoma strong.” 2020 has been a tough year for Sonoma County: on top of the pandemic, we are faced with out of control fires, poor air quality, divisive politics, and the spread of mis- and disinformation.
If you're wondering about permissions and what you can do with this item, a good starting point is the "rights information" on this page. See our terms of use for more tips.
Share your story
Has Calisphere helped you advance your research, complete a project, or find something meaningful? We'd love to hear about it; please send us a message.
